In Hell
by Chidori no Titania
Summary: And they are in Hell, each and every one of them
1. Prologue

"_Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."_

_-Gates of Hell, Inferno, Dante Alighieri  
_And they are in Hell, each and every one of them.


	2. misteravengersyndrome

_misteravengersyndrome_

He is in Hell.

Tied around his neck are the ghosts of his past, and they drag him down, down, in a dark spiral that he can't quite seem to escape. First Itachi, then Konoha, he seeks revenge, retribution,_ justice_ for the ghosts in his head, urging him forward down a warped path of destruction. He knows it's all a lie, somewhere deep down in what remains of his soul, that revenge is transient and his famed detachment is merely a fragile mask, and so the ghosts urge him on.

_(but it burns, oh fuck it _burns_, his quest for power searing his veins in liquid fire, jet black Amaterasu flames, the curse seal turning him to a demon, the Eternal Mangekyou setting his eyes towards the darkness and he's not sure he remembers what love is anymore because his life is blood red revenge and white hot hatred) _

And he sees *them* again, and the look on her face as she tries to kill him and then as he nearly kills her and the looks on their faces as they try to drag him from the abyss tell him a story a million words never could. But the voices of ghosts long dead sound in his ears and so he turns his back on them and laughs. Laughs at their optimism, their hope_-idiocy-_ in thinking that he could be saved, that he could come back, but that one tiny shred of his soul, the remnants of the piece that long ago threw him in the way of icy needles for *him* (because names evoke emotion, and he does not _have_ emotions), that learned the call lightning from the sky from another *him* and may have even almost loved *her* enough to die for her, all of them really, screams, cries, _howls_ in sheer agony, indescribably worse than the pain of activating that accursed seal for the first time. And no matter how hard he tries, he simply cannot suppress this small remnant of a different person from a different time within him entirely, but the ghosts cry out, and his path lies down, down past the darkness, into the flames.

This, he thinks, is Hell.


	3. missuselessmedicawarrior

_missuselessmedicwarrior_

She is in Hell.

She thought she was equal to her boys, thought the three of them could walk side by side. But in a dark forest that reeks of death and decay, facing three shinobi who could kill her in a heartbeat, her world comes crashing down and she realizes that she is _useless. _Deadweight. So she slices away her inhibitions, pink locks _(chains)_ falling down to the ground, but it's too little, too late- and how could it ever be enough, when she's so goddamn _weak_- and once again she ends up cowering on her knees in fear, cowering behind the girl who she swore she'd never lose to again. And then they both leave, the one who would die for her and the one she'd die for, and her world shatters around her again.

_(so she trains, trains, and trains more, pushing for more strength, more power, because she will be their equal, but one returns and she sees she is nothing in his golden aura- the one that on the worst days is stained a ghastly blood red- so she trains more and works and works until she thinks she has nothing left but her strength and her healing)_

The next time they meet again, the world is ending, and they are the only ones left to save it. She sees her boys working together for the first time in years, (the last time they tried to kill each other) and her heart wrenches at the sight. But she looks again, and she realizes, heart sinking, that though she is now a warrior and an unrivalled medic, though she can rend the earth and sky asunder with one finger, it's not enough. Weak. For all her blood and sweat and tears, those years of pushing herself to the brink and beyond, she is still too weak. She can't stand side by side with them any more then she could all those years ago. Next time, she promises herself, next time, but isn't that what she said last time and the time before that? And she knows that the small, yet powerful stubborn streak within her will never allow her to stop trying, but the larger, and no longer naïve part of her realizes that it will never, ever be enough.

This, she thinks, is Hell.


End file.
